Michael Gerson: Obama's Speech...

Speaking of rhetoric, Gerson's response is not top quality either: "I found some of the phrasing odd when they tried to reach they did not reach effectively for memorable phrases." How about these couple of fragments: "He made one reference to his father, if he had been here 50 or 60 years ago he might have been denied service. Which I thought was fine, but it needed ambitious rhetorical summary and he purposely did not do it."
He keeps talking about how Obama's speech was not rhetorical, but I wonder if it really matters. Whether he uses perfect rhetoric or not, Barack Obama captures the attention of the people, inspiring hope across the nation. Because Obama wants to come across as a citizen on the same level as the public, colloquialisms are a choice. His colloquial language creates a authoritative yet friendly tone.

I must say that I did not understand the part about "parsing" Rick Warren's prayer and the fact that it was pluralism. Personally, I thought that it was great that Warren actually used the name of Jesus because most of the time he is so busy trying to make people happy that he doesn't preach Jesus. I'm glad that he used it, and I don't think that saying Jesus' name in multiple languages is religiously pluralistic.